Perhaps if enough liberals keep getting whacked by Cancel Culture, we might have a chance to regain free speech.
The latest episode involves Emily Wilder, a newly hired “news associate” for the Associated Press who was axed last week after the Stanford College Republicans and the Washington Free Beacon exposed her anti-Semitic tweets.
The AP’s face plant on Wilder started earlier last week, when the College Republicans posted a series of tweets about her political activism.
In one, Wilder referred to the late pro-Trump billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who was Jewish, as a “naked mole rat.” She also was a leader in a group called Students for Justice in Palestine, which had connections to the Islamic terrorist group Hamas. In an oped she had referred to conservative columnist Ben Shapiro as a “little turd,” and participated in a “Return the Birthright” protest, which criticized Israel for its treatment of Palestinians and suggested Israel has no claim to its land, which rightfully belongs to Palestinians.
On Tuesday, a day after College Republicans unrolled their tweets about Wilder, the Free Beacon picked up the story and noted the AP’s newfound sensitivity to claims of anti-Israel bias in its coverage of the ongoing rocket attacks.
The AP criticized Israel over the previous weekend after an Israeli airstrike crushed its building. The Israeli military maintained that Hamas housed a command and control center there as well as intelligence operatives. No one was injured in the attack, however, as Israel tipped off the occupants about the bombing.
The AP claimed ignorance. In a statement, AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt asserted he “shocked and horrified” by the attack, and added, “We have no indication of a Hamas presence in the building, nor were we warned of any such possible presence before the airstrike. This is something we check as best we can.”
A former AP reporter had refuted that, however, noting in a 2014 article in The Atlantic that Hamas routinely fired rockets outside the AP’s office and that, as well as other violent acts, went unreported in order not to cross Hamas, or because of a creeping “distaste” for Israel.
Nevertheless, last week, the AP appeared to respond to the criticism and fired Wilder. The news service said she had violated its policies on political activism.
For her part, Wilder complained to the San Francisco Chronicle that “This is exactly the issue with the rhetoric around ‘cancel culture.'”
Right. Which is what makes Cancel Culture so wicked in a supposedly free country.
The conservative Media Research Center noted lefty journos were lining upto defend Wilder. It’s not clear which they detest more: the Cancel Culture they helped foment or the Israelis.
But the Free Beacon, in its own editorial on Wilder, nailed the problem that should apply to the AP and other mainstream media:
“If the AP were serious in its concern that the broader public view it as an independent and sober source of news, it might take a closer look at a hiring process that greenlights political activists and a management that promotes them to positions of power and influence.”
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